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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379099">Of Being Left Behind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamogirl/pseuds/Mamogirl'>Mamogirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Backstreet Boys</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, But just only hurt, Character Study, Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major character death - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:46:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,346</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379099</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamogirl/pseuds/Mamogirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick died.<br/>And Brian was pretty sure that a part of him died as well.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nick Carter/Brian Littrell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Of Being Left Behind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="u">To Be Left Behind</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>To my dad,<br/>who never knew his daughter was a writer.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They said time would heal the pain. That was all he needed, apparently. Just time, as if it was a medicine that he could take every day and, magically, it could make everything disappear as if it hadn’t even happened.</p>
<p>What a joke.</p>
<p>He didn’t need time. He didn’t want to need time because that would had meant that it was all true. And he didn’t want it to be true. He wanted it to be just a nightmare, a frightening and horrible dream that he couldn’t seem to be able to wake up from.</p>
<p>It couldn’t be true.</p>
<p><em>He</em> couldn’t be...</p>
<p>That was the problem, or just one of the many. He still couldn’t accept it. He still couldn’t even say it out loud, as if that was all that it took to erase the memory of the last weeks and make them seem like far away images of a different life and a different reality.</p>
<p>They couldn’t be true, could they?</p>
<p>The house seemed colder, even though it was the middle of the summer and the humidity in Las Vegas had always been almost impossible to bear: everywhere he went, he couldn’t shake away that coldness that had seemed to have swept right underneath his bones. Night and day. Day and night, he was just so cold, and nothing seemed to change that feeling. Maybe it was because it wasn’t his body that was cold, but it was his soul that had stopped working.</p>
<p>Everything had been frozen since that horrible, terrible, and unchangeable day.</p>
<p>Nothing had ever been the same since that call, and what a twist irony that now, those famous words from their own song, seemed describing his life in a cruel reality: <em>let me tell you about the call that changed my destiny.</em> It seemed even oh so crueler that everything had always depended on a call: hadn’t it been for Kevin’s call, many, and many decades before, he wouldn’t even had been able to meet the love of his life, whatever that was remaining. Hadn’t it been for his own call, made in the midst of depression and longing to change everything that was so wrong in his life, he would hadn’t be able to have those last months, fragments of a dream that was forever broken and shattered.</p>
<p>How was he supposed to go on?</p>
<p>How was he supposed to move on, move past something that had shattered everything? His life, his world, his dreams, and his will to live? How was he supposed to just heal?</p>
<p>One month. Had it been just a month? Had it been already a month? Time flown and blurred, a day or a year didn’t seem anymore so different from each other. Thirty-one days counted down as if there was something at the end of the line. But there was nothing. Only emptiness. Only sadness and pain, burned into his heart and soul and never willing to let go. He walked around the house as a ghost, touching walls and memories as if he could still see them taking life before his eyes: the day he marched into that house, kissing him with a force that had left both breathless and finally, oh so finally complete; the nights spent watching movies, fighting for who was supposed to choose that time; the days spent together, never really aware that a countdown was already cutting down their happiness.</p>
<p>Death was a solitary matter. After the news, the phone had never stopped ringing: everyone wanted to chip in, everyone wanted to have a part in that act. They sent their condolences as a pure act of respect, an illusion before sitting down and wanting to know the gossip, as if that was all that was left. Pure gossip. Pure curiosity for a life that no one had really known. But then... but then time had passed by and fewer and fewer tried to stay in contact, only those who really felt as if something had just gone missing. But no one could really understand what he had just lost: not only a friend, not only a partner and lover.</p>
<p>And no one couldn’t make it right anymore.</p>
<p>And so he hid. And so he turned off the phone, closed that door and managed to keep the world outside that sphere of grief and loss. After all, how could he face the world where <em>his death</em> had become just one of the many? How could he step into a functioning world when his own had stopped a month before?</p>
<p>Nothing made sense. Nothing could make sense because that was death: the end of everything, with no room left for questions and answers? Why did he leave him? Why didn’t he at least say goodbye?</p>
<p>Why him? Was he that bad and mean person everyone kept saying on social media? Did he really deserve to have his heart broken into pieces, and his soul crushed? What was the sense in that?</p>
<p>He wished he could find an answer. He wished he could look at the future and see that day that everyone kept talking about: the healing. The ending of that pain. The day when he would stop feeling as if he was living with half of his soul.</p>
<p>He just didn’t believe it anymore, though.</p>
<p>Maybe he was that bad. Maybe he really deserved it. But not like that. Why did <em>he</em> have to die just so that he could be punished?</p>
<p>And so the questions went always unanswered. And so his life kept drifting though days, attempts of going back to a life that didn’t even resemble normality anymore. Pictures brought him down on a path of memories of a happier life and, yet, some of them were full of regrets: so many years wasted in a war that, now, seemed so stupid; so many things that they would never be able to achieve, enjoy or just do together. They had so many plans. They had so many goals to obtain and so much happiness.</p>
<p>Why was he cheated off of that?</p>
<p>Brian’s eyes fell upon the picture he was holding in his hands. Their last Christmas together, the tree shining behind their smiles and their eyes melting into each other. God, he missed Nick. God, he missed the way he would always look at him, as if the world, the sun, and the moon rounded around him. God, he missed his laughs, they way his smile would reach up to his eyes and made them even brighter and bluer. God, he missed Nick’s crazy and nerd talks, the way he would try to convince him about some weird theory about aliens and spaceships. God, Brian missed the way Nick made him feel, stronger and surer about his strength and how he could take the world, if he wanted. But he didn’t, not really. All he cared of was that small world they had managed to create, between hate and love, among pain and happiness. God, he missed his kisses. His hugs. They way their bodies seemed to fit so perfectly, as if fate had always wanted them to be together. God, he missed how he only needed to look up to know why his life made sense. Or why he had been saved so many times: his purpose had always been to be with Nick.</p>
<p>And now, what did he have left?</p>
<p>Nothing. Just shreds of something that hurt more than whatever comfort could ever bring. Just shattered memories and a life that he would never be able to get back, no matter how much he would cry or scream.</p>
<p>No one listened anymore.</p>
<p>No one cared anymore.</p>
<p>Brian only wanted one thing. And that one thing was, also, the one that he would never be able to get back.</p>
<p>“I miss you.” A broken voice rose from the silence, as one single and solitaire tear waged between a happiness that had disappear in a second.</p>
<p>And gone forever.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is probably one of the hardest and most personal story I've ever written. <br/>This is the story that I've never wanted to write, not especially if it was inspired by real life. <br/>I've lost my dad one month ago and, just like this Brian, I'm trying to find a sense, a meaning and a way to heal. Writing, and mostly Brian and Nick, has always been the only way I knew to sort through my emotions and thoughts. It's just so heartbroken than it's my dad's death the thing that brought me back to the beginning, when I would just write because I loved it and wouldn't be touched by the toxicity of the fandom. <br/>I don't know when I'll be back with something new. Maybe soon, maybe later. I really don't know. <br/>But I will.</p>
<p>Cinzia</p></blockquote></div></div>
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